


Naming of Parts

by imaginary_golux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Consent, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Force-Sensitive Finn, Menstruation, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-03 17:51:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10972359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Most of the time, Rey is a smallish, territorial, viciously loyal young woman. Sometimes, when she's really really angry, one of those descriptors is not quite accurate. This changes fewer things than you might expect.Beta by my wonderful Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	1. Chapter 1

Rey Changes for the first time when she is, as best she can tell, eight years old. Birthdays are, of course, not marked on Jakku, and as best Rey can tell a year on Jakku is not the same length as a year at Home, but she thinks she’s eight. She has just recently gotten tall enough that Unkar Plutt (may the sandrats eat his bones) has declared she can’t stay in the children’s tent any longer, and has managed to find, by sheer luck more than anything else, the hulk of an abandoned AT-AT, which she is slowly but surely making into something vaguely like a home. Not - not like _Home_ , of course, not like the place where her family lives, but a place for her nonetheless.

But of course, being out of the children’s tent means that Rey doesn’t get fed for cleaning rust and sand off of the pieces of junk that people sell to Unkar Plutt (may the sandstorm strip his flesh away) anymore, and she hasn’t managed to find a good scavenging ground yet, one that’s not already claimed by someone larger and stronger, so she’s living off of hoarded quarter-rations and the tiny seep-spring near her AT-AT, and on the day of her first Change, she has finished all of her rations and is so desperately, miserably, _hopelessly_ hungry that she sits down in the full sun - something she knows perfectly well not to do - and weeps.

And then she gets _angry_. Angry at Unkar Plutt (may he rot in the sun) for kicking her out of the children’s tent, angry at her parents for leaving her here, angry at the endless sun and sand for _killing_ her - so angry it seems like she will burst into flames and burn to ash from the strength of it. And then all at once she doubles over in pain - like the pain of her empty stomach screaming for food, but worse, far worse, worse even than the pain of watching her parents leave - and then, all at once, the pain is gone.

And she can smell _food_.

She trundles across the sand towards the _food_ -smell, and there, yes, there’s a nest of sand-scorpions, and she digs them out with her enormous claws and crunches them down happily, her thick fur keeping her perfectly safe from their stings; and then there’s another _food_ -smell off to her left, so she follows _that_ smell, and ooh, sandmice, sleeping through the heat of the day, and Rey almost _never_ gets meat, this is marvelous, so she swallows _them_ down, savoring every bite, and then she’s thirsty so she follows the smell of water back to her seep-spring and drinks deeply and sits back on her haunches and -

Wait.

_What?_

Rey looks down at her hands and finds that they are _paws_ , paws with enormous, sharp-edged, deadly-looking claws upon them. She twists around to squint at herself and finds that she is furred, stout, compact -

Not human.

Perhaps if she was older this would worry her more; but Rey _is_ only eight, and an eight-year-old, even on Jakku, occasionally has silly dreams of what it might be like to be able to change one’s shape, to be a bird or a happabore or a sandmouse leaping among the dunes. And she is still, just barely, young enough to believe in magic. So she does not panic at her new and unexpected form, but examines it carefully, as best she can. She is small - maybe a third of her normal size - and covered with thick fur, white along her back and dark along her stomach and limbs and her short, thick tail. She has quite remarkable digging claws, sharp and heavy, and she runs her tongue over her teeth to discover that they are quite formidably sharp.

It’s a _good_ shape. She’s low to the ground and furred against sun and cold, she can defend herself with her claws and her teeth, and she can smell food and water. Rey _likes_ this new shape.

She wears it for days, that first time. She eats herself to fullness, for the first time in _years_ , on the tiny animals that live around her AT-AT, that she cannot find and catch in her human form. She sleeps curled in a ball on the heap of rags she calls a bed, and spends her time when not eating or sleeping digging the sand out from around her home, heaping it up at a marvelous speed until the whole ancient hulk is revealed.

But there are thing a person cannot do without hands, and Rey - Rey doesn’t actually want to be a whatever-she-is _forever_. So five days after she Changed for the first time, she sits up on her haunches in the middle of the AT-AT and tries to remember how it felt to Change, to become other than she was.

She sits there for hours, growing more and more frustrated, until at last the frustration turns to sheer, crystallized _rage_ and she curls around it and _there_ , there’s the pain, less than the first time but still agonizing -

And she is sitting on the floor of her AT-AT, as human as she’s ever been, looking down at her hands in astonishment, as the rage ebbs away into wonder.

*

After that, Rey practices every night, finding that core of rage inside her soul and forcing herself into her other form and back again. It grows easier as the years go by, until at last she needs neither rage nor pain to trigger the Change, but only a moment of focused determination.

She claims a section of the ship-graveyard for her scavenging, and though there are those who try to take it from her, she gains a reputation for fighting hard and dirty, going for the tender bits, and occasionally - though this rumor is usually discounted by the people who have not encountered her in battle - turning into a small furry ball of rage and claws, and tearing important pieces off of her opponents. She kills several, as the years go by, both as a human and in her other form, and she leaves their bones near the edges of her territory as a warning to others. (She doesn’t eat them. Even in her other form, she remembers that you don’t eat _people_. But the fact that the bodies attract predators, and those predators aren’t on the lookout for attack...well, she eats well _because_ of the bodies, if not _of_ them, and Unkar Plutt (may he be devoured by sand scorpions) is baffled by how well-fed she looks when she comes in after a week alone in the desert.)

She makes a name for herself, in a small way. The people of Niima Outpost start calling her _Ratel_ , the warning before attack, and though Rey loves the name her mother gave her, holds it close to her heart and cherishes it, she doesn’t mind having a name that shows how fierce and dangerous she is as well.

Even Unkar Plutt (may he die alone in the vast desert, screaming) is careful around her, by the time she is - as best she can estimate - nineteen. He is wary of her staff and her glare and the rumor - which he discounts, but does not quite dare ignore - that she could easily become something far more ferocious than a small human woman with a sharp-edged snarl.

*

And then there is the droid, and Finn, and the First Order raiding Niima, and stealing the _Millennium Falcon_ , and meeting Han Solo and Chewbacca, and rathtars, and really it’s all very overwhelming for a girl from Jakku. And Rey’s other form wouldn’t have been much use against Stormtroopers or rathtars, really, and in any case the chaos of the escape kept her from concentrating long enough to Change.

Takodana is beautiful, green as Rey has never imagined anything to be green. Maz is baffling. The lightsaber is _terrifying_ , and Rey does not deal well with terror; and then, of course, there’s the First Order attacking, and Rey follows BB-8 into the forest, which is beautiful and green but _not_ the desert that she knows as well as her own claws.

She is too terrified, when Kylo Ren finds her, to Change - she has never needed to Change out of _fear_ before, only rage, and she’s too scared to be angry.

But when she wakes in that dreadful chair - oh, _then_ she is angry. She grits her teeth and holds her shape while Kylo Ren postures and threatens, while he tries to _read her mind_ \- oh, she is so angry she could _scream_ \- and while she tears his darkest secrets from the depths of his own mind and throws them into his face, the cowardly scum.

And when he leaves, she takes that rage and _uses_ it, and Changes.

Her other form is not held by the human-sized restraints, of course. She slides out of the dreadful chair and snarls at it, then trundles towards the door. There is a single Stormtrooper on guard there, looking out into the corridor instead of back into the room, and Rey rears up on her hind legs and gets her claws into the gaps in his armor at the back of the knees and tears holy hell out of his legs.

The Stormtrooper goes down with a scream of agony, and Rey Changes back and snatches up his blaster and goes sprinting down the corridor. She’s faster as a human than in her other form, but she’s just as fierce in both, and her teeth are bared in a snarl that would do her other form full justice. She’s scared and furious and wants desperately to kill something.

And then - miracle -

 _Finn_.

Rey hugs him hard, not caring that Han Solo and Chewbacca are watching, and swears silently that she will defend this man - this man who _came back for her_ \- with all the strength and rage that’s in her. She’s pretty sure her other form is that of a solitary animal, but she has chosen Finn and Finn has chosen her, and somewhere deep within her rage her other form agrees that yes, Finn can stay. She will protect him and he will protect her and they will defeat _all_ their enemies, and leave the bleeding carcasses for the vultures. Yes.

And he _does_ protect her, standing over her with the lightsaber when Kylo Ren’s powers fling her into a tree - Rey is not quite knocked unconscious, but the world goes dim and hazy and her back is afire with pain. She sees Finn fall, though. Oh yes, she sees that, and the rage drives her to her feet, the rage calls the lightsaber to her, the rage sees her leaping teeth-bared at her enemy, and he drives her back across the snow and she is losing - she cannot be losing - he has her pinned against edge of the crumbling cliff and Finn is still lying so still, so terribly still, and -

And he gives her a moment to think. To concentrate.

To Change.

Rey snarls the warning that the people of Jakku have learned to fear, and goes not for the lightsaber in Kylo Ren’s hand, much too far above her head, nor for his booted feet, but for the tender underbelly, the most vulnerable place on any creature. Kylo Ren is not, it must be admitted, expecting the slender young woman to turn into twenty pounds of very angry predator, and doesn’t quite manage to catch his balance before Rey has knocked him over and is making a very good try at disemboweling him - only the thick belt keeps her from succeeding, and even then, he’s bleeding from dozens of deep, hideous gashes before she gives up on that, and it’s mostly his luck and the fact that she’s trying for a disembowelment more than anything else that keeps her from getting at the big veins in his thighs, which _would_ have killed him pretty fast. Rey’s too angry to think of that, though. Kylo Ren is still trying to figure out how to use his lightsaber against an opponent _literally atop him_ when she rears back on her hind legs atop his chest and claws his face to the bone, then leaps off, Changing as she goes, and sprints for Finn.

Finn is unconscious, his back gashed open by the lightsaber’s blade, and Rey probably would go back and finish killing Kylo Ren except for the earthquake which opens the ground between them, wider than she can leap, and then Chewbacca is bringing the _Falcon_ in low, and Rey leaves her defeated enemy bleeding and weeping in the snow and follows Chewbacca as he carries Finn - _her_ Finn - into the ship and away.

*

She doesn’t want to leave Finn. Oh, she knows he’s healing, knows the bacta the Resistance medics have dumped on him will patch him up good as new - the medics _promised_ \- but Finn is _hers_ and she doesn’t want to leave him. But apparently she’s the only person with half a chance of getting Luke Skywalker to come back and join the fight, and both General Leia and Poe Dameron have sworn up and down that they’ll make sure Finn is alright, so Rey takes the map and the _Falcon_ and the still-grieving Wookiee and heads for the Outer Rim.

Ahch-To is beautiful, in a wild ocean sort of way, but Rey is far too worried about Finn to truly appreciate the view. She puts the _Falcon_ down at the base of a staircase carved into a cliff, and trudges furiously up the stairs, bag thumping against her hip, until at last she finds the famous Last Jedi standing at the top, staring out over the endless ocean like it holds the secrets of the universe.

Rey holds the lightsaber out, and tries desperately to find words. She _should_ probably say something like, ‘Help me, Luke Skywalker, you’re my only hope.’ But she is scared, and angry, and kind of wants to kill something with her bare claws, and so what she says is, “General Leia needs you back. So you’re coming with me.”

Luke Skywalker’s eyebrows rise. “I am?” he asks.

“Yes,” Rey snarls. “Or I will kriffing well _drag_ you.”

“I see,” Skywalker says, and folds his hands together in the sleeves of his long grey robe. “Well. How can I argue with that?”

So Rey returns to the Resistance with Luke Skywalker in tow, and leaves him embracing his sister while she runs through the halls to medical, to find Finn sitting up in bed and doing very careful stretches under the direction of a patient med-droid. Rey doesn’t fling herself into his arms, because that might hurt him, but she sits down hard in the chair beside the bed and grabs his hand in both of hers when he holds it out. She’s grinning, all her rage replaced in a shining moment by joy.

“Rey,” Finn says, beaming. “They _said_ you’d be back soon.”

“Finn,” Rey says, and runs out of words, and - well - she can’t hug him as a human, because she’ll hurt his back, but that’s not her only option, and she hops up to sit on the bed and then Changes, and curls herself into a furry ball on his lap.

Finn blinks down at her for a long moment, and then he says, voice full of wonder, “That’s _amazing_ ,” and runs a hand down her back. Rey makes a happy snuffling sound and leans into the caress, and Finn pets her, hands gentle and patient and absolutely wonderful, until she falls asleep.

When she wakes up, Poe Dameron is sitting in the chair by Finn’s bed, staring down at her. “Finn, buddy,” he says, “apparently my hearing is starting to go. I could have _sworn_ you said that this was Rey.”

“She is,” Finn says, his hand warm and heavy on Rey’s back. Rey chirps and leans into it, and Finn chuckles and starts stroking again.

“...Buddy,” Poe Dameron says slowly, “I have met Rey, and she was a little less...um...furry.”

Rey chirps again and rolls to her feet, stepping daintily off of Finn’s lap so as not to do any damage, and sits down on the side of the bed, and Changes. Poe Dameron rears back, nearly falling off his chair.

“Kriffing _hell_ ,” he says, eyes wide. “That is _some_ trick!”

“It’s _amazing_ ,” Finn says again. Rey grins at him and reaches out to take his hand. Finn’s fingers are warm and his palm is broad and callused, and she likes the way it feels in hers.

“I brought back Luke Skywalker,” she says, because she’s not sure how to verbalize the fizzing, glorious warmth inside her chest, the way looking at Finn makes her want to smile and curl into his arms and dance all at the same time.

“I hear you threatened to drag him back by the beard,” Poe Dameron says, sounding vastly amused. Rey considers him carefully. He’s a good friend to Finn, she knows from the little Finn was able to tell her during their time on the _Falcon_ , and he’s clearly been taking care of Finn while she was gone, just like he promised, and BB-8 adores him. And he seems...friendly. Rey’s not used to people being friendly, but she thinks that’s what she’s getting from Poe Dameron.

“Not by the beard,” she says, shrugging. “Just in general.” But she smiles a little so it doesn’t sound too harsh.

“Huh,” Poe Dameron says, nodding. “Good to know. And good to see you back, Rey. I’ll let you two tell each other what’s been going on.” He stands and claps Finn on his uninjured shoulder, nods politely to Rey - who appreciates him not trying to touch her, and nods back, smiling a little more genuinely - and wanders out, BB-8 whirring along at his heels. Rey slews around to look at Finn properly.

“You’re really going to be alright?” she asks anxiously.

“I really am,” Finn promises, beaming at her. Rey can’t help grinning back; Finn’s joy is infectious. “Especially now that you’re back.”

Rey kisses him. She’s not very good at it, since she’s never kissed anyone before, and their noses knock together and she bites his lip accidentally, but then his free hand is on her face and she tilts her head a little and the kiss gets a whole lot better, sweet and deep and _lovely_.

“Yeah?” Rey asks, sort of nonsensically, as they finally pull apart just far enough to lean their foreheads together, Finn’s breath warm on her lips.

“Yeah,” Finn says softly.

“Okay,” Rey says, and they sit there together, smiling, until the med-droid comes bustling in for Finn’s physical therapy.

*

Rey agrees to train with Luke Skywalker, mostly for the sake of having something to _do_ but also so that the next time she encounters Kylo Ren, assuming he didn’t bleed out in the snow, she can kill him more efficiently. Luke Skywalker looks pained when she says that, but Rey doesn’t care. It’s true.

She agrees to let Poe Dameron teach her how to fly an X-Wing, too, both because it looks like fun and because Poe Dameron so clearly wants to be friends, and Rey is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, because he’s nice to Finn and hasn’t said anything stupid to Rey yet. One of the techs _did_ say something stupid to Rey, actually, about Finn being a traitor and not to be trusted, and Rey broke both of his legs before Poe Dameron got there, but then when Poe heard what the guy had said he yelled at the _tech_ , saying Finn was braver and stronger than anyone else on base, and had the tech demoted, and told Rey he understood completely but please don’t break too many people because the Resistance was so shorthanded. Rey can understand that.

She’s given her own room, which is good, because Rey is a little territorial sometimes. Okay, a lot territorial. But it’s _hers_ , and it _locks_ , and nobody but BB-8 ever tries to come in, and BB-8 is alright. Rey doesn’t mind droids. He lets her ride on his head when she’s in her other form, too, whizzing through the base as she chirps with glee. The first time Poe sees them he laughs so hard he falls over, and when _Finn_ sees them he has to put a pillow over his face to muffle his guffaws.

When Finn is well enough to get out of medical, he’s given the room next to Rey’s. Rey likes knowing that he’s right on the other side of the wall, that if she knocks gently he’ll knock back. He’s assigned to train with Luke Skywalker, too, just like her, and Rey likes that a _lot_ , likes sparring with Finn and meditating beside him and learning to use the Force with him. In the afternoons, while Rey is out flying or fixing things or learning to cook - and oh, she _likes_ learning to cook, it’s _wonderful_ , and it’s even better when she brings Finn food she’s made with her own two hands and he _eats_ it and it’s - she doesn’t even have words for how good it is - in the afternoons, Finn goes to tell the intelligence people everything he remembers about the First Order, and then he goes to be General Leia’s aide and learn how to be an officer, because he’s smart and tactical and someday, Rey is sure, he’ll be a general too.

(Poe laughs when she says that, but it’s not a mean laugh, and when he’s done laughing he says, “Yeah, he will. He’s gonna be - he’s gonna be even more mindblowingly awesome than he is already, one of these days.” So Rey doesn’t have to yell at him for laughing at Finn, because he understands.)

It’s weird being around people, but the Resistance fighters all learn pretty fast that whether she’s human or in her other form, Rey is fierce and furious and protective of Finn and will go for the tender bits instinctually, and so they give her space and don’t bother her while she’s eating and don’t say mean things about Finn anywhere she can hear, so that’s alright.

And then there’s Finn, who holds her hand while she’s human and lets her curl up in his lap while she’s in her other form, and pets her so gently, and has such lovely warm hands, and laughs so easily, and is so brave and strong and gentle and kind. It’s Finn who spends hours on the holonet and finally finds out what sort of animal her other form _is_.

“You’re a honey badger,” he tells Rey, the two of them curled up on his bunk with the datapad propped up in front of them. “They’re fierce and territorial, but they can also be very loyal and protective, and they’re really dangerous.”

Rey grins, looking down at the datapad and snuggling closer under Finn’s arm. “A honey badger. Neat! I didn’t know it was a real type of animal.”

Finn takes a deep breath, his chest moving beneath her cheek. “Could I - could I call you Honey? As - as a sort of a - don’t boyfriends and girlfriends have special names for each other, sometimes?”

Rey sits up properly and kisses him so he can stop verbally flailing, and thinks about it while they kiss. “Yes,” she says finally, “but only when we’re alone. I don’t want anyone else to think they can call me that.”

“Deal,” Finn says, nodding firmly. “Honey.”

The word is so sweet in his voice that Rey has to kiss him again.

Three days later Rey gets authorized to join the X-Wing pilots on their missions, and Poe asks her what she wants her call name to be. Rey thinks about it for a minute and then says, “Ratel. Call me Ratel.”

“Ratel it is,” Poe says, grinning, and now Rey has _three_ names, and people around the base start calling her Ratel as a nickname, and Finn calls her _Honey_ with such sweet love in his voice that it makes her chest hurt, and -

Really, life is pretty good.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey’s been with the Resistance for six months, six months of training and learning and kissing Finn and flying X-Wings and cooking, when her body finally discovers that it’s no longer malnourished and stressed all to hell, and Rey wakes up with her thighs wet with blood. She swears so loud it wakes up Finn, on the other side of the wall, and she trusts him enough to unlock the door for him when he comes scrambling into the corridor. Of course she trusts him. He’s _Finn_.

“Oh,” Finn says, when he sees her standing naked and bloodstained in the middle of her room, scowling at the stained bedsheets. “You’ve got your menstrual period.”

“My _what now,_ ” Rey says.

“Female cadets got it,” Finn says, shrugging. “Every month, until we graduated to 'trooper and they started getting injections instead. It’s to do with reproduction, I think, but they weren’t very clear on that. D’you want me to go down to medical and see if they have something to help?”

“Please,” Rey says, deeply tempted to Change just so whatever this is will _stop_ , but she gets into the shower instead, turning the water up as hot as it will go, as Finn carefully locks the door behind him and trots down to medical. Water showers are still a baffling luxury to Rey. On Jakku she mostly took dust baths as her honey-badger self, or scrubbed with sand, which was unpleasant but effective.

Finn returns with his arms full of pamphlets and a box, and Rey opens the door still dripping from the shower. He dumps his burdens on her bunk, next to the bloodstain, and hands her a box. “Doc Kalonia said the instructions were on the box,” he says, shrugging, “and then she’d like to see you down in medical.”

Rey retreats into the bathroom again with the box, which turns out to be full of strange adhesive pads to be put on her underthings so as to catch the blood - how unsanitary - and comes out again dry and dressed. Finn has apparently spent the intervening time stacking the pamphlets on top of her dresser and stripping the bloodstained sheets off of the bed. “We can drop these off at the laundry on our way down to medical,” he offers, and Rey’s heart clenches in her chest with how much she loves him.

“Yeah,” she agrees, and they head off down the corridor together.

Doc Kalonia gives Rey a short but very informative talk about reproductive health in human females - “Or at least near-human, since _most_ of us can’t turn into honey badgers, more’s the pity,” - and an implant which will apparently keep Rey from getting pregnant, should she choose to do any of the assorted things which might ordinarily result in a pregnancy, and several more shots which will apparently vaccinate Rey against the sort of diseases that come with being sexually active. Of course, then she gets a worrisome look in her eyes and asks Rey about her _other_ vaccinations, and the end result of the whole mess is that Rey comes out of medical with a _very_ sore arm and an implant which will apparently keep her from bleeding every month and a stern admonishment to eat more protein.

Finn is waiting for her with clean sheets and a broad, cheerful smile, and Rey kisses him right there in the middle of the corridor, because she can.

She reads all the pamphlets Doc Kalonia sent along with Finn on his first trip, memorizing the information as carefully as she ever memorized the circuitry of a droid - because this is _her_ circuitry, after all, and if she knows how she works, she’ll be able to fix herself, right? Most of it is very bland and informative, explanations of the things Doc Kalonia told her in person, but then there’s the last pamphlet, which was folded inside another one.

It’s an explanation of of basic human sexuality, and Rey reads it through three times before she has to go take a long shower, leaning her forehead against the wall and thinking hard. And then once she’s dry she Changes and curls up in a little ball on the pillow and thinks some more.

Does she - does she want that? Her honey-badger self is pretty clear on the fact that Finn is _mate_ , is the only person who can enter Rey’s burrow and eat her food and curl up beside her. Sex honestly just seems like an extension of that, to her honey-badger form.

Her human self is a little less sure. It’s one thing to curl up on Finn’s lap when she’s Changed, to have her fur stroked and wave her claws in the air when he ruffles her belly-fur; it would be quite another thing to do the same as a _human_. Wouldn’t it? Or would it feel just as good, Finn’s hands on her skin instead of her fur?

She likes kissing Finn. She could do that for hours and hours and never get bored. And she likes sparring with Finn, their bodies straining against each other, his strength and speed and skill against hers. She likes holding his hand, his broad palm warm against hers. She trusts him to have her back in battle, to never do her harm, to come back for her even into his worst nightmare, to eat her food and enter her territory and touch her -

Okay, yes, she _definitely_ wants to have sex with him.

Rey Changes back and reads the pamphlet again, even though she’s pretty much memorized it already, and then she gets the datapad she hardly ever uses and gets onto the holonet and looks for more information, because she needs to know what she’s doing before she tells Finn what she wants. There’s a lot of really stupid information available, stuff that can’t _possibly_ be true, but Rey is used to looking for valuable nuggets in among the trash, and with a little work she finds things that look...probable, that look like things people could actually _do_ together.

She spends some time that evening imagining doing those things with _Finn_ , and has to bite down on her own knuckles to muffle the moans that Finn might hear through the walls. She’s distracted during meditation the next day, spends too long staring at Finn’s lips while they’re sparring and gets thrown into a wall - Finn is very apologetic, but it’s really her own fault - and gives him an extra sweet-roll at dinner for no reason but to see him smile.

So yes, okay, she wants to drag him back to her room - her den, her _territory_ , which smells like her and has her few possessions neatly arranged - and pin him to the bed and do all sorts of new and exciting things with him. But she’s also still bleeding, because apparently the implant Doc Kalonia gave her won’t kick in until after this first menstrual period is over, and something deep and instinctual in Rey’s bones insists that she mustn’t let _anyone_ that close, even her mate, while she is bleeding-vulnerable.

It takes three days before she stops bleeding, and by the third day Rey is about ready to go and beg Doc Kalonia for something to make it _stop_. She’s not used to her body disobeying her, doing things she’s not used to, and it makes her angry and twitchy and nervous. Finn brings her chocolate with a worried smile, saying Jess Pava told him it was traditional, and Poe sends BB-8 over with a strange hard pillow that heats up at the push of a button and feels marvelous on Rey’s sore stomach, and Rey doesn’t Change because she might hurt someone by accident in her other form. She curls around the heating pillow and eats the chocolate and distracts herself with thoughts of what she’d like to do with Finn. She’s had a lot of practice at distracting herself from pain, after all.

Though her chosen daydreams were never quite this good before.

*

And then of course as soon as she’s not _bleeding_ anymore she and Luke Skywalker are sent off on a mission in one direction and Finn and Poe are sent off on a mission in the _other_ direction and Rey spends the entire trip in the _Falcon_ as a honey badger curled up on Chewbacca’s lap, sulking.

She tears the kneecaps off the Knight of Ren who tries to stop them from reaching the ancient Jedi temple which is their target, and then tears out his throat when he falls screaming to the ground. Luke Skywalker sighs and points out that bloody murder is not the Jedi way. Rey snarls up at him, white fur stained red and claws still dripping, and Changes to her human form, shaking the blood from her fingers, to say, “Kriff that, he was planning to torture us before he killed us. It’s not _my_ fault he didn’t think I was a threat.”

Luke Skywalker sighs again, but he doesn’t say she’s wrong, which is good, because she’s not. Rey doesn’t kill people for _fun_ , after all. She kills people when they’re dangerous to her - or, more recently, when they’re dangerous to Finn or to the Resistance, because Finn is her mate and the Resistance are her people and she’ll protect them with all the fury she has. But she doesn’t kill for fun, and she doesn’t torture, and a honey badger’s rage is not the twisted sickness of the Dark side but a clean and cleansing fire.

Which Luke Skywalker knows perfectly well, when he’s not pretending that Jedi never kill anybody; but then, a lot of people get sort of twitchy when there’s a body bleeding out at their feet. Rey’s never quite understood that. It’s just blood. As long as it’s not hers or Finn’s - okay, or Poe’s or Jess’s or Leia’s or Luke’s or Chewbacca’s - alright, fine, as long as it’s an _enemy’s_ blood, who cares?

Getting the artifact out of the Jedi temple turns out to be pretty anticlimactic after that, which is a good thing, and Rey is mollified enough by having gotten to kill something that she doesn’t Change once they’re back to the ship, but takes the controls with Chewie while Luke Skywalker goes back and meditates at the artifact in the main room.

And when they get back to base at last, Finn is back too.

*

Rey eats dinner with Finn and Poe and the other X-Wing pilots and tells them about killing the Knight of Ren, and Jess Pava and Snap Wexley applaud, and Poe gives her an extra sweet roll and a look that Rey has learned means ‘You are terrifying but I like you anyway,’ and Finn takes her hand once she’s done eating, his fingers warm around hers, and smiles at her like she’s the center of the universe.

So when they’re walking back to their rooms after dinner, pleasantly full and joyfully hand-in-hand, Rey says, “I want to have sex with you.”

Finn startles, hard. But he doesn’t drop Rey’s hand, and he starts walking again after a moment of utter immobility, so Rey figures he’s probably alright.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

Rey frowns at him. “Of course I’m sure,” she says. “I read all the pamphlets and I went and looked up more information and I thought about it a _lot_.”

“...Oh,” Finn says. “But - um - with _me?_ ”

“Who else?” Rey asks, baffled.

“Poe?” Finn suggests. “He’s really handsome and he makes you laugh.”

“He’s...funny,” Rey agrees dubiously. “But he’s not _you_. Why in the galaxy would I want anyone but you?”

“Oh,” Finn says, sort of wonderingly. “Well. Um. When you put it that way. Um. I would very much like to have sex with you, too, but I honestly haven’t had any experience. It wasn’t...encouraged.”

“I read the pamphlets,” Rey says again, shrugging. “And everyone else seems to manage it, so it can’t be _that_ hard. And we’re good at kissing and sparring together, right?”

“Right,” Finn agrees, and kisses her right there, in the middle of the corridor, and whispers _Honey_ in her ear so quietly no one else could hear it even if they were right next to her. Rey guesses that counts as private.

It’s a _really_ good kiss, too. So Rey palms open the lock to her door and pulls Finn in with her, and then pins him up against the door as it closes and kisses him again. His hands go around her waist, warm and broad and gentle, and she leans against him with one arm around his shoulders and the other hand scratching gently through his hair just the way he likes, the way she _knows_ he likes because it sparks in the Force between them, bright shining pinpricks of pleasure like stars. And oh, she honestly hadn’t even considered that - the fact that the Force is something they both can read, something that will let them know if they’re doing this right - but apparently Finn hadn’t either, because he looks at her with his eyes wide and beautiful and says, “ _Oh_ ,” and kisses her fiercely.

Rey bites him. She doesn’t quite mean to, and she doesn’t draw blood, but he tastes so _good_ and then - and then -

He gasps against her mouth and goes all _shaky_ in the Force, against the door, his hands clenching a little harder around her waist like she’s all that’s holding him up. “Oh,” Rey says, astonished and delighted. “You like that.”

“I guess I do,” Finn agrees. He’s breathing harder than he usually does even when they’re _sparring_ , this is _marvelous_.

“Come _on_ ,” Rey says, and tugs him towards the bed. “I want to see what else you like. Take off your clothes!” She shucks her own tunic and breeches as quickly as she can, turns bare and proud to see Finn folding his tunic - because of _course_ he is - and stares.

“Kriff,” she says, after a long moment. “You’re - really handsome.”

“You’re _gorgeous_ ,” Finn says, and Rey shivers a little with pleasure as his gaze runs over her, admiring and awed and hungry.

“I want -” Rey says, stepping forward and putting one hand very gently on Finn’s chest, just beside the scar on his shoulder. She’s not quite sure what the rest of that sentence is.

“Anything,” Finn says solemnly, and his hands are back on her waist but there’s no tunic between them, and they’re so _warm_ and so _big_ and she _wants_ -

“Bed,” she says decisively, and topples Finn back onto it with a leg sweep she knows he could counter. He doesn’t, though, just falls back onto the bed with a _thump_ and squirms until his head is properly on the pillows, and Rey looks at him all spread out on _her_ bed in _her_ room, _her_ scent all over him, and is almost overcome with the urge to keep him there forever.

But Finn’s a person, not a possession, and he wouldn’t want to be kept. Finn is her _mate_ , and he’s here because he wants to be, and Rey can understand that - can _value_ that - in human form and honey badger form alike.

She sprawls on top of him, reveling in warm skin and the way his joy lights up the Force, and kisses him until they’re both gasping, and then sits back on her knees and runs her hands wonderingly over Finn’s chest and shoulders. Finn reaches up to touch her, too, and she leans into his hands, lets the soft sounds of pleasure fall from her lips without worrying that they will be taken as signs of weakness - here, with Finn, she does not have to worry about seeming weak. They learn together that Rey likes Finn’s hands cupped warm and gentle around her breasts, that she squeaks when he brushes his thumbs over her nipples, that she bends easily when he curls a hand around the back of her neck and pulls her gently down for another kiss.

They learn, too, that while Finn likes Rey’s hands gentle and soft on his chest, he likes it _more_ when she scratches a little, when her fingers dig in as she clings to him, when she bites sharp and careful at his lips while they kiss. She does not draw blood - blood has no place here in their bed, now or ever - but she can feel through the Force when the tiny sting of pain turns to shivering pleasure, and _oh_ , she likes knowing she can do that, she can _give_ that, to her mate and love.

Finn slides one warm hand down her back, stroking her like she’s in her other form, and Rey purrs with it, sprawls out atop him and feels like she might turn into a puddle of happiness, kisses Finn sweet and sharp and hungry and swallows his soft moans of pleasure. “Want to make you feel good, Honey,” he murmurs in her ear, and Rey shivers.

“I already do,” she admits. “Can’t you feel it?” The Force is shining around them, reflecting their pleasure in shivering glints.

“Yeah,” Finn says, “but - oh, show me how, show me how to make you feel _good_ , Rey, please?”

Rey bites the curve of Finn’s shoulder to hold in the whimper, then rolls them both to one side so they’ve both got free hands, and Finn strokes gentle and sweet down her front, thumbs carefully at one nipple until she squeaks, taps a finger against her navel to make her giggle. Rey reaches down to guide his hand between her legs, shows him through the Force what she has learned to please herself in the last few weeks, and Finn is, as ever, a terrifyingly fast learner - and it’s so different, having someone _else’s_ hand there, having _Finn’s_ hand there, even if he’s only doing what Rey shows him, what Rey does herself, but the angle is different and his fingers are broader than hers and she can feel his delight sparking through the Force -

She comes with a shuddering cry, and Finn kisses her as she does, muffling the sound with his lips. Rey goes limp, panting with astonishment and joy, and Finn smiles down at her with such wonder in his eyes that she has to haul him down and kiss him, not even caring that his weight is mostly pinning her down - it’s _Finn_ , it’s safe, it’s wonderful - and gasp, “Show me, show me how to make _you_ -” against his lips.

Finn shudders, Force sparking with pleasure between them, and then it is Rey’s turn to let him guide her hand, to wrap her fingers around warm flesh, the skin softer than she’d imagined over the hardness beneath, to stroke the way he shows her he likes it and read the astonished delight and incredulous pleasure from the Force, to kiss him silent as he comes.

Rey can’t help feeling a little smug. This is _her_ mate, _her_ beloved, and _she_ made him feel so good that he’s sprawled out on top of her, panting hotly against her skin, the Force glowing with pleasure around them.

“Kriff, Honey,” Finn says after a while, rolling off and sprawling out on his back. Rey takes this golden opportunity to sling an arm and a leg over him and nestle her head on his chest, and Finn chuckles and pets her hair with a gentle, shaking hand. “I love you, Rey.”

Rey looks up at that, and cranes her neck to kiss him. “Of course I love you,” she says, grinning down at him, and _leans_ on the Force, sending all her love and possessive affection and desire out to wash over Finn like the endless oceans of Ahch-To. Finn gasps, and grins, and then -

Then Rey is surrounded by _Finn’s_ love, vast as the desert and warm as the sun and comforting as his hands stroking her fur. It’s the best thing she’s ever felt.

“My Finn,” she says contentedly, and settles down with her head on his chest again, the soft thudding of his heartbeat a comforting rhythm. She can feel Finn’s quiet pleasure in the Force, and in the warm weight of his hand as he strokes her back, long and slow like she’s in her other form.

“My Rey,” she hears him say, voice rumbling gently beneath her cheek, and smiles, wrapping the name around herself like a blanket, like her other form’s warm fur. Finn’s Rey. Yes. She is Finn’s Rey, and this is exactly where she is supposed to be; she and her other form are in full agreement on that. Wrapped around her mate, in her safe burrow, warm and well-fed and loved.

**Author's Note:**

> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr; come say hi!
> 
> This will update Wednesday.


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